


you are his knight

by gingerbread man (xphantomhive)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Death, Guilt, M/M, Murder, Post-Apocalypse, Suicide, rated m for just containing some heavy shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2016-03-18
Packaged: 2018-05-27 09:38:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6279310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xphantomhive/pseuds/gingerbread%20man
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's your job to protect him until your last breath.</p><p>You won't fail.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you are his knight

You find him crying underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, knees drawn close to his chest, like he’s forcing himself to disappear. It doesn’t seem to be working out too well.

“Hey,” you say quietly, and he jumps, but that’s normal. From what you know and remember, people nowadays always startle easily. You’re the only survivor now, aside from that green-eyed girl you met a couple of weeks ago in New York, but she was so small, so thin. She was almost gone already, mostly skin and bone. She was just waiting to waste away. You wonder if that was what she really wanted, her ultimate goal - to waste away. You think that by now, she ought to be dead, but you aren’t a doctor. “It’s okay, bud. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

You’ve found that speaking to fellow survivors like dogs seemed to calm them down significantly, but it doesn’t seem to work for this boy. He’s still curled into himself, tense like a snake about to strike, and you can’t even see his face. Just looking at him you can tell he hasn’t been alone for long, that there was someone else with him who was sharing (more like giving) him all of their food. You wonder who it was. You wonder if he’ll tell you. “Hey, uh, survivors stick together, right? My name is Dave Strider. I’m seventeen.”

He finally looks up at you, and his eyes are so blue, so hopeful, that it makes your breath catch in your throat. It almost threatens to suffocate you. It’s been years since you’ve seen someone look so genuinely hopeful, so sure that things would look up soon. “I’m John Egbert,” he gives softly, and you breathe a sigh of relief. Now you’re getting somewhere. “I’m sixteen. My dad just died. He was giving me all of his food, and I was so-” his breath catches, and there are tears in his eyes. “I was so hungry, Dave. I was so hungry, and I didn’t think, didn’t know he was dying. I thought. I thought that he was eating too, I thought we both were. I thought.”

He breaks off into a sob, and you aren’t sure what to do, you’re never sure anymore, so you scoop him up in your arms and rock him back and forth like your Bro used to do when you were little, when you had nightmares about him dying by the hand of a big black monster and you as an orange half-bird, and you ran to him with your thumb in your mouth, crying. “It’s okay, John, it’s okay, it’s not your fault,” you babble, and suddenly the world is on your shoulders.

The world being John Egbert. You’ve shouldered a weight named John Egbert, he’s sixteen, and his eyes look like hope.

;;

You like to pretend that you’re the knight and John is the heir to the throne, your heir.

Your sole job is to protect him. To keep him alive for as long as you can. You give him his own portion of food and half of yours, and if he tries to say anything you only tell him that what you’re eating is plenty for you, even though you know he can see the way your eyes are sunken and the way your hipbones jut out and the way your ribs are almost fully visible. “You’re starving yourself,” he says one night, matter-of-factly, because you’ve learned that though John is generally very oblivious, he’s right when he’s right, and he knows when he is. “Stop that. Eat my portion tonight, I’m not even that hungry.”

You’re starving. You’d love to eat his portion and yours. “I’m not that hungry, either,” you lie through your teeth, because you’re the knight. If your heir isn’t alive, that means that all hope is lost, that it’s all died with him.

He shakes his head. “You don’t have to be my knight in shining armor, Dave. I can take care of myself.”

You have a feeling that there was another lifetime. In that one he could take care of himself, too, but you never cared even though you knew. You were always his knight, you always shouldered the burden of keeping him alive and protecting him. Always. “I know, but you ain’t gotta because I’m gonna take care of you.”

He has no snippy response to that.

;;

It takes him exactly five days, ten hours, five minutes, and three seconds to come apart at the seams. You’ve always had a thing for time. You’re there to catch him when it happens, when he falls, to pick up the pieces and put them back together, but it isn’t enough, because he claws at your chest and shoves you away and screams and screams and screams, “Don’t touch me, Dave! Don’t touch me, let me go, don’t touch me!” but you hold him close, you coddle him, you keep the pieces together. You are the glue, he is the puzzle, and you’ll keep him together to the last piece.

It takes him another two days to lose it completely, and when you wake up with a blade pressed to your throat you pretend that you’re still asleep because you know what’s coming next. You try not to scream when he drags the blade across your throat, slowly. You let him kill you because you love him. You’re his knight; you’ll keep him alive to the last second you can.

;;

You blink. Look up. Stare at the blood at your hands, on the hunting knife, the blood dripping steadily from Dave’s neck. And you cry, you cry and cry and cry, because he was your glue, he was yours, he was all you had, he was your knight, and you pick him up and hold him close like he used to hold you, like he won’t any longer. You pray to some god above to give him back to you, yell that you need him, that he’s yours. That they don’t need him. That you do. You need him, he’s yours, and you want him back. You didn’t mean it. You’re sorry.

The gods respond, You did mean it.

Your chest twists, and you press your lips to his. They’re still warm. You cry more.

The gods say, I know you love him, but you are weak, and that is why you have killed him. You have become selfish. It happens to the best of us.

You get no more chances, though.

You remember how you used to love video games, and in your brain the words “GAME OVER” are flashing over and over again in big green letters. You keep him in your arms and search your campsite for the gun, because you know there’s one here, you know you had one, and you find it after a few minutes of searching.

You press it to your temple. You kiss Dave one last time, hold him close to your chest, and pull the trigger. You die with the word sorry on your lips, a million times over.

You are not sorry, the gods say. 

**Author's Note:**

> before you ask, yes, the green-eyed girl in the beginning that dave met in new york was indeed jade. i'm certain someone must have picked up on that. (it was originally rose, but then i made her god, instead.)
> 
> well, this is the final thing i'll be posting today! if you've read through everything i've posted, thank you for your dedication! i know my fanfics aren't really anything special, but i'm glad to have as many devoted readers as i do.


End file.
